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Leonardo DiCaprio Warns ‘Oceans Being Pushed to the Brink’

Courtesy of WENN Newsdesk
Leonardo DiCaprio addressed a U.S. State Department oceans conference on Thursday and discussed his longstanding concerns for the world’s oceans.
According to The Washington Post, Oscar-winner DiCaprio was introduced on stage by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a fellow passionate environmental activist, who made a joke about The Revenant star’s previous experience with icebergs in the 1997 hit film Titanic.

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“It didn’t go so well,” Kerry joked of the fact that 41-year-old DiCaprio’s Titanic character Jack did not survive the famous ship’s sinking by a gigantic iceberg, but then gave his stage partner a sound endorsement.
“We’ve been able to hang together and plot environmental endeavors… He’s a committed activist, the genuine article.”
DiCaprio, meanwhile, warned conference audience members that the fishing industry is “pushing our oceans to the very brink, treating our oceans as an endless resource and a dumping ground for our waste.”
He also introduced Global Fishing Watch, a newly-developed online tracking tool intended to monitor commercial fishing. The team behind the tool, which includes bosses at Google, insist it will let the general public, media and government keep an eye out for illegal harvesting of fish or over-fishing of regulated areas.
DiCaprio also highlighted the recent bleaching of a 600-mile stretch of Australia’s famed area of coral, the Great Barrier Reef.
“The destruction of marine ecosystems like coral reefs are pushing our oceans to the very brink. I saw it with my own eyes, filming the new film Before the Flood which chronicles the impact of climate change,” reported the Post.
“What I saw took my breath away: not a fish in sight, colorless ghost-like coral, a complete graveyard. This is the state of the majority of the world’s coral reefs and it’s a sobering reality.”
Before The Flood, featuring contributions from DiCaprio, Kerry, former president Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 9 and will be released by National Geographic in 171 countries on October 31.